Here’s Why Cybercriminals Are Now Imitating Brands on Social Media

Social media has often become a hotbed of criminal activity and now cyber criminals have found a new way to to partake in their deeds. The latest popular method is to imitate brands, according to report in WWD. The reasoning behind this, which is usually done by simply copying and pasting the brand’s information into another profile, is to use the trustworthiness of these brands in order to make users give up their information quicker than they normally would do.

The criminals often base their activity around a trending topic and use the hype around that to attack victims. The groups send malicious URLS in order to take credit card information or personal data as well as also infecting devices with malware, begin a scam or, in some cases, direct the user to counterfeit merchandise. The impersonation accounts often add ‘support’ or ‘help’ to the profile names in order to seem like an official branch of the brand.